"Concept Demo" Awards Program

Disqualifications

The disqualifications and criteria are each broken into two parts, with an important difference between the two parts. The first part has rules, such as no pornography and no browser crashes, that are important, but they're things you probably expect if you have read the criteria for several of the top Award Sites! programs. If you know your website meets all of those requirements, you can safely skim them, or skip to the program specific disqualifications. If you don't know what I'm referring through, I ask you to read through all the disqualifiers. One disqualifier, on either list, will bring the evaluation to a screeching halt.

Common Disqualifications

There may be no rude, offensive, or dangerous content, or content that incites dangerous, offensive, or illegal activity.

There may be no pirated software (warez) or links to sites with warez.

There may be no cracking (breaking into people's computers) or materials that encourage or help cracking.

No occult (Wicca, Satanism, New Age, etc.)

Your site may not cause a browser crashe at any point in the evaluation.

Your site may not contain any internal broken links. (I will check it with Xenu Link Checker.)

Your site may not contain pornography or nudity.

Your site may not defame or promote discrimination against any people or group of people.

Your site may not contain plaigarism, copyright infringement, or bandwidth stealing.

Your site may not contain or promote malware, including requiring Comet Cursor, which is spyware.

Your site must have a clearly visible, child-save privacy policy.

Your site must be rated with ICRA/PICS, and must give a child-safe green light on validation.

Your site must contain at least 10 pages of actual content, excluding guestbooks, collections of links, awards sections, and administrative pages like privacy policies, copyright, and terms of use.

Any page that fails to load in under 30 seconds on my broadband connection, after three attempts on my part, will disqualify your site.

If you have a Flash introduction, there must be a "Skip Intro" link.

No spam.

No scams, multi-layer marketing/pyramid schemes, etc.

Your site must be in English or French, or have a complete English or French version available.

I will visit your site at or above 800x600 navigation. If I see a horizontal scrollbar, your site will be disqualified.

I will visit your site at or above 800x600 navigation. If I see a scrollbar after 7 clicks, your site will be disqualified.

Your site must make use of alt and noframes tags (if appropriate).

Your site must not have popup windows. This includes i.e. GeoCities popups; popups are annoying, and if your web host uses popups, you should consider moving to a host that doesn't make your website seem offensive.

Your site must not contain copyright violations.

I must be able to reach you and your site with the information you provide, exactly as you type it.

I must not need a password to access your site. It is not enough to give me the password because you're still excluding almost everyone else.

If you run an awards program, your website must meet the standards of your highest award.

Program-Specific Disqualifications

Both the program-specific disqualifications and program-specific criteria draw on knowledge that many awards programs do not incorporate. Especially in the area of usability (user-friendliness), there is a lot of good knowledge that awards programs do not yet incorporate. If one of my disqualifications surprises you, please read the stated reason. You may learn something new.

What do I know about usability? Well, I have two master's degrees, and both of them involve heavy lifting in issues related to usability (making software user-friendly). And I know who to pay attention to. If there is one usability author I wish web awards people (and webmasters) would read, it is Jakob Nielsen. And I'm not the only person who respects him. Even if I have two master's degrees, he knows a lot more about usability than I do. The New York Times calls him "the guru of web page usability." U.S. News & World Report calls him "the world's leading expert on web usability." Stuttgarter Zeitung calls him "the world's leading expert on web usability." And the Chicago Tribune says he "knows more about what makes web sites work than anyone else on the planet."

Jakob Nielsen publishes a column at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ that reports a number of practical things we can all do to make better websites. It's a real treasure trove, and it's worth spending some time browsing around. And in many cases I will link to articles so people who want to know more about the requirement can get it straight from the horse's mouth.

Note that I am visually separating the criteria from each other and from the reasons. An applicant who doesn't want the rationale, but just wants to see if their site qualifies, can scan through and skip the reasons. This is a minor feature intended to save applicant time.

Every link, including external links, must open in the same window.

Reason: It's common to require that external links open in a new window. And also wrong for a couple of reasons. First, it's handicap inaccessible. Opening a link in a new window is much worse than a missing alt tag. Because of the limitations of nonvisual browsers, opening a link in a new window often causes blind people so much trouble that they can't get back to your site if you want. Second, it's confusing to inexperienced visitors. It causes problems on lower-end computers, and some people may wonder why their back button is greyed out and they can't get back to your lovely site. This is why Jakob Nielsen not only says not to do it; he ranks it as one of the top ten mistakes in web design. Read More (scroll down to "9. Opening New Browser Windows").

Most text, including all navigation links, must be the default font size or larger. On all pages, the user must be able to control the size of the text by normal browser mechanisms.

Reason: Most web designers have excellent vision. That is a good thing, because it means that graphics are crisp and clear. But it's not so good when web designers forget that their vision is above average and design as if everybody can see as well as the designer can. What is meant as a good way to save space and makes the pages smaller means that, for many visitors, the entire page is hard to read. (This happens on many awards sites.) Before linking to more of Jakob Nielsen's articles, I would point out that his site uses the default font size. This is not an accident, nor is it an accident that my site uses the default font size. Read More; Second article (scroll down to "Text Size and Color").

Do not destroy the browser feature of making visited and unvisited links different colors.

Reason: As others have said, making visited and unvisited links the same color to achieve an aesthetic effect is like painting a stop sign green so it will match the color of a nearby building. Making visited and unvisited links the same color is one of the easiest ways to mess up visitors' navigation abilities by confusing them about where they've been and where they haven't been. Read More.

Your URL must not contain a tilde (~).

Reason: Large numbers of users do not know how to type a tilde.

Your website must work under any browser I try to visit it with and must not tell me that I should use a particular browser/version/resolution to see it. Furthermore, all navigation must work with Flash, Java, and JavaScript turned off.

Reason: My site is not so good that people are going to download another browser so they can see it, nor are they going to buy a larger monitor. Neither is yours. Flash, Java, and some JavaScript navigation has been called "mystery meat navigation" because if you don't have the technology installed--for instance, if you're blind and your browser doesn't show cool-looking Flash menus--then you can't tell what you're selecting, if you can use it at all. Add to this many people in the first, second, and third world who do not have state of the art computers and who do not feel comfortable enough with technology to upgrade their browser and install plugins, and what you have is navigation that includes people. Standard HTML navigation is inclusive. Mystery meat navigation is inappropriate because it excludes people. (An exception is made if there is alternate navigation so visitors can move about the site even if their browsers won't let them use the mystery meat navigation.)

Your design must be similar to that of some other sites I've seen, including major sites.

Reason: Why am I reccommending this when most programs want a distinctive design? The answer to that can be seen in my own article, The Case for Uncreative Web Design. A new design is one that users will have to figure out. An old, or in other words, familiar, design is one that users already know how to use. Besides bluntly saying, "Zero learning time or die," Nielsen observes, "It has long been true that websites do more business the more standardized their design is. Think Yahoo and Amazon." He's talking about commercial websites, but for the same reason personal pages work better if new visitors already know how to use them. Instead of trying to invent a navigation system that no one has thought of before, it adds value to a website to learn to make effective use of things that are proven to work well, things that your visitors will already know how to use. Read More.

This list is just where these disqualifiers are written down. It is common practice to have an awards program meet the criteria of its top award; this site is meant to do far more than tell about the criteria. This site is meant to put the pieces together and show what they look like in action. Are you wondering why this site employs a standard design? Couldn't I think of something more creative? The last disqualifier explains why, and I try to practice what I preach. And to show what it means to practice what I preach.